New 6700K, quick and dirty OC

Just took delivery of the following last night

Intel Core i7-6700K 4.0GHz
Gigabyte Z170-Gaming K3 Intel Z170
Corsair Vengeance 16GB (4x4GB) DDR4 PC4-21300C15 2666MHz

After a few quick trial and errors I appear to have settled on a 4.7Ghz OC with a vcore of 1.3, max temps after a 20 min Prine95 are 86C using a Thermalright Silver Arrow.

That appears to be the sweet spot as to get 4.8Ghz requires about 1.42 or a core drops out on P95, the heat is also in the 90's so not keen on that!

How does the above look? My first OC in years after rocking a 4.6ghz 2500k for 5 years!

Whats the deal with all the power saving features in the BIOS. With my SB I had them all disabled to prevent micro stuttering, is this necessary on these new chips? How do you guys run them in this regard, and the power setting modes in windows?

One other observation was that the core clock on my 980ti is changing rapidly when gaming. On the SB there was a few levels it operated on, flicking between as the load changed, however on this platform the core clock appears to be constantly changing to suit the load. Is that something to do with the new board?

Thats a good overclock, temps seem a little high for 1.3v so not sure what your airflow situation is like? But Prime is unnecessarily hard on the CPU and very hot so you're probably fine. I normally just stability test with RealBench which isn't quite so hot and havn't had any stability issues.

Yeah I thought it was really hot. With my 2500k IBT tended to be way over P95 with the temps, but this is the other way round!

Never tried real bench, will give it a shot.

My airflow situation is limited for silence. I have a HAF-X case with only one large intake at slow speed, no exhausts. The positive pressure and lack of dust screens worked well with the 2500k, all hot air cut flows out the top.

Thats good. Mine crashes at 4.5ghz with 1.35vcore. Actually been running it at stock since I prefer quiet these days.

I have to agree temps seem high. What is the cooler intake air temp? If it is more then 3-5c above room ambient you might consider optimizing your case airflow.
https://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showpost.php?p=26159770&postcount=7

Is your Silver Arrow the original or newer Silver Arrow SB-E or IB-E model? What fans do you have on it?

Ambient is 20C. Only one slow spinning large intake fan. Using the non extreme Silver Arrow. There is no way I can get 4.8ghz with 1.4, temps rocket over 90C, but the current 4.7ghz @ 1.3 is good for now in the low 80's.

20c room is not what I asked. What is the cooler intake air temp. Cooler intake air is higher temp then room in 999 out of 1000 cases.
2-5c is very good
10-20c is common
20-30c is not uncommon

'non extreme Silver Arrow' is not a model I've ever heard of.
Models are
Silver Arrow
Silver Arrow SB-E and Silver Arrow SB-E Extreme
Silver Arrow IB-E and Silver Aroow IB-E Extreme
SIlver Arrow ITX

Silver Arrow SB-E.

Intake temp 7c hotter than ambient.

Good cooler, but all are similar. Original Silver Arrow was a little better at idle, but not enough to matter.

Intake temp is not a fixed temperature in 99% of systems, It varies depending on load.

Even mine with case fan speeds changeing dependent on CPU and GPU heat load varies betwee 2c and 5c.

Don't play prime95. It's a rubbish game and really taxing on the system.

Hi all. An update on my 6700k overclock.

So I must admit to being a bit deflated with my new 6700K as the temps were insane, and the noise from my cooler pretty loud. I was even slightly regretting switching from my 2500k. But after lots of late night / very early morning Googling, I have had a lot of success today.

The first thing I found was this article
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/answers/id-3069463/prime-stress-test-6700k.html

'Do NOT run any versions of Prime95 later than 26.6. Here's why:

Core i 2nd through 6th Generation CPU's have AVX (Advanced Vector Extension) instruction sets. Recent versions of Prime95, such as 28.9, run AVX code on the Floating Point Unit (FPU) math coprocessor, which produces unrealistically high temperatures. The FPU test in the utility AIDA64 shows similar results.

Prime95 v26.6 produces temperatures on 3rd through 6th Generation processors more consistent with 2nd Generation, which also have AVX instructions, but do not suffer from thermal extremes due to having a soldered Integrated Heat Spreader and a significantly larger Die.

Please download Prime95 version 26.6 - http://windows-downloads-center.blogspot.com/2011/04/prime95-266.html

Run only Small FFT’s for 10 minutes.

Use Real Temp to measure your Core temperatures, as it was developed specifically for Intel processors: Real Temp - http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/2089/real-temp-3-70/

Your Core temperatures will test 10 to 20C lower with v26.6 than with v28.9.'



Right enough, this version of P95 knocked over 10C of my temps.

Next, although my RAM is 2666, it had an XMP profile for 2800 which I was running. I read that this was likely causing problems so backed it down to 2666, and the voltage from 1.35 to 1.2.

Next, noticed a serious amount of vdroop of nearly 0.1 of a volt. Found the LLC setting and popped it on high.

Next, re installed the CPU just to be sure!

Booted and went straight for the big guns, 5ghz 1.4 volts, no go, BSOD.
Found 4.8 Ghz at 1.4 stable and began the knock the voltage down incrementally.

I didn't BSOD until below 1.26 volts!!

I have ran 10 passes for IBT at high setting, 1/2 hr of P95, passes of 3dmark, Cinebench, and a few rounds of BF1. Doesn't skip a beat at 4.8 Ghz and 1.26 volts! Maximum core temp after all that, 69C.

Now I know in a lot of peps books that doesn't count as a stability test, but I cant be bothered with 24 hrs of Prime, and 200 passes of IBT. Once it passes about an hr of random benchmarks its good for me. I find regular gaming shows more instability than a lot of stress tests!

Seriously chuffed! 4.8 Ghz at 1.26 volts and the system is totally silent!!!